A blog containing the arbitrary and capricious musings and writings of a neophyte apologist learning to be more prepared to defend of his faith to anyone who calls him to account for the hope that is in him and doing so with gentleness and reverence. [1 Peter 3:15]
Or as the Boy Scout in me would say, "Semper Paratus!"

Sunday, April 03, 2011

"A Fallible Collection of Infallible Books" by Jamie Donald

(This article was written by my friend, Jamie Donald, who graciously gave me permission to post it here. Please enjoy!)

A Fallible Collection of Infallible Books

This description of the Canon of Scripture, used by our Protestant brothers and sisters, has always left me somewhat perplexed. Rather than expound on my own understanding of the phrase, I'd like to turn to a blog article by James Swan on this topic. What James wrote a couple of months ago at Sproul: "The Bible is a fallible collection of infallible books" vastly improved my understanding of this description.

James notes that this phrase comes from RC Sproul (who possibly got it from John Gerstner). Swan does not believe that the "fallible" clause means the Church did actually err when consolidating various writings into the Canon, only that the Church was not provided the special protection from error (which we call "infallibility"). He summarizes Gerstner's thoughts as, It is one thing to say that the church could have erred; it is another thing to say that the church did err. (emphasis added) Thus, Swan believes that the early church was used by God and "got it right" (to use a popular phrase I've seen with some Protestant e-pologists).

Perhaps an analogy is in order. Since we're in March Madness, I'll use a basketball analogy. Imagine that it's the closing seconds of the game and your team is down by one point. The coach calls a time out and outlines a play for his team. They only have time for this single play. They must score to win and advance in the tournament. The coach knows his star player will be double teamed, so he directs the ball be passed to whomever is free. When the opposing team shifts to cover the ball, that will free up the star and the ball is to be passed to him. The star will go in for the easy lay-up, scoring 2 points at the buzzer, winning the game.

The ball gets in-bounded to a guard. But instead of passing to the star, the guard sees that he's still free – it takes the other team some time to adjust their coverage. So he takes the shot from 3-point range. Everyone is on edge as they watch the ball – on a low percentage shot – not the sure thing of a lay-up – sails through the air. The ball goes through; "nothing but net' and your team wins the game.

The next day, the coach calls the guard into his office. He says, "I don't know if I should congratulate you as a hero, or bench you for the next game in the tourney. You didn't follow my orders!" The guard replies, "But Coach, I won the game for us!" The coach presses his point, "You could have missed!" And the guard answers, "But I didn't."

Just as the guard could have missed the shot in the game, the early Church could have "missed" on the Canon of Scripture. But they didn't miss. That is Swan's point. The Church wasn't protected from missing, but in history managed to get the right answer.

Swan notes that the Church plays a role in the Canon, but not as the author. He writes, I recognize the Christian Church received the Canon. It does not though, create the Canon, or stand above the Canon. (emphasis added) In this respect, the Church is to receive the Scriptures as a gift from God. When receiving a gift, it is the giver, not the recipient, who guarantees the quality of the gift. For example, if I give my wife a present for her birthday or our anniversary; if the gift is cheesy, that is my fault – not my wife's. Likewise, if she unwraps it and excitedly declares, "It's perfect!" the high quality of the gift was my doing, not hers. Hers is to appreciate the quality of the gift. The Scriptures are God's gift to us, His Church; and there is nothing we do (nor can do) which influences or causes the perfection, the inerrancy, of the Word.

Finally, Swan bolsters his point on a fallible Church by noting that the first century Christians and late pre-Christ Jews had received the Old Testament without an infallible source to declare that the writings were in fact the correct ones. If these ancients could know the Word of God without the charism of infallibility, then so can modern Christians.

At this point, I will let the reader review my summary and balance it against Swan's article to determine if I am correctly discerning his viewpoint.

In offering a critique of Swan's article, I would first note that there is much in it with which I think Catholics can agree. Read paragraphs 104, 105, 106, 136 of The Catechism of the Catholic Church, and you will see that the Church receives the Scriptures, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and have been handed on as such to the church herself. (emphasis added) Indeed, they are a gift to the Church and their unique nature of inerrancy is based on the giver, God Himself.

However, the role of the Church in the process of discovering the Canon of Scripture is something more than simply an occurrence in history that ended up "right." Where the basketball game had an objective standard to determine whether the player was a hero or not – the ball either did or did not go through the hoop, there is no objective standard by which to measure a writing as "scripture" or "not scripture." Without a standard against which he can measure, how does Swan proclaim the Protestant canon as the early Church got it right, while proclaiming that the Catholic canon (with the deuterocanonicals), the Coptic canon, or even Marcion's canon are "wrong"?

Let's look at this prospect another way. Tradition plays an important (although non binding) role in Protestant understanding of what should be considered, or not considered, an apostolic teaching. Tradition (with a small "t") informs and provides background to their understanding and interpretation of the Bible, where the New Testament contains all the writings which are "apostolic teaching." For example, Lutherans look at various Scriptural passages along with their traditional interpretive lens and conclude that baptismal regeneration is an apostolic teaching. However, since the Lutheran tradition – their interpretive lens – is not binding, they consider Swan to be a brother in Christ even though the tradition of his confession disagrees with baptismal regeneration and supports that disagreement with Scriptural references.

Please note that the purpose is not to get into a discussion about baptismal regeneration, nor to show that there are differences in interpretation amongst various traditions. The purpose is to try to highlight that tradition informs the interpretation of the Scriptures as to what is and is not an apostolic teaching, yet that same tradition is not binding in the Protestant paradigm.

But one of the qualities used by the Church to determine what is and is not Scripture is apostolicity. So when the very question about the canon is "is this writing apostolic teaching or not?" one can't determine the answer by looking at the writing itself. There must be some external measure. What it boils down to is that each group, Protestant, Catholic, Coptic, Marcion, etc, proclaim what they believe to have received as Scripture. To say that in the process worked out in history, the early Church got it "right" is to say that you believe your tradition.

Now it would be unfair and inaccurate to say that Swan thinks along the lines, "The Canon is what it is because I (or my denomination) says it is." He provides a reason for why he thinks the early Church correctly identified the Canon. He writes, The Church was used by God to provide a widespread knowledge of the Canon. The Holy Spirit had worked among the early Christian Church in providing them with the books of the New Testament. Not only does the Church receive the Scriptures as a gift from God, but God also ensures that the Church provides to the world the knowledge of the [correct] Scriptures. Swan is certain to tell us that it is God's work, not the Church's, which gets the Canon correct. As a Catholic, I can agree with much, if not all of this thought process.

But in this particular thought, Swan ends up proving the Catholic case! Let us return to the analogy of me giving a gift to my wife. If I have hidden the gift in a room, then tell her "warmer" as she gets closer to the hiding spot and "colder" as she moves away from it, she will find the gift. Under my guidance, she would be assured of finding the gift. It becomes impossible for her to not find it, or to "get it wrong." Again, Swan wrote, The Holy Spirit had worked among the early Christian Church in providing them with the books of the New Testament. (bolded to emphasize the entire sentence) The early Church was prevented from "getting it wrong" by the power of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit's work in her.

That is the definition of infallibility in the lexicon of the Catholic Church. Infallibility, the assurance of not "getting it wrong" is often confused with inerrancy, the charism of definitely getting it correct. For example, with the topic of crime, a person's silence does not teach that crime is proper. Thus, it is not necessarily "wrong." But speaking out against crime would be the "correct" action. Infallibility does not ensure the latter action. Inerrancy does. It follows then that anything that has the quality of inerrancy would also be infallible, but being infallible does not guarantee inerrancy. The Scriptures themselves, handed on from God, with God as their author, are inerrant. The Church's discovery of the Canon is infallible, but not inerrant.

That the Church infallibly discovered the Canon, the gift from God to her, does not mean that she create[s] the Canon, or stand[s] above the Canon as Swan says. But as the Catechism (86) quotes Dei Verbum, the Church is not superior to the Word of God, but is its servant. It teaches only what has been handed on to it. At the divine command and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it listens to this devotedly, guards it with dedication and expounds it faithfully. (emphasis added) Just as Swan believes that God gives the Scriptures to the Church and guides her in discovering them, Catholics believe the same. The difference is that Catholics acknowledge that God does not fail in what He sets out to accomplish. Therefore, if God uses the Church to provide a widespread knowledge of the Canon, then a failure of the Church would mean that God failed. And that cannot happen.

Swan's final point, written as, The Old Testament believer 50 years before Christ was born had a canon of Scripture, this despite the ruling from an infallible authority, is a position stating that the Old Testament was set and known without an infallible organization. It is also an assertion of his conclusion (begging the question fallacy). The fallacy is not immediately apparent until after one understands what Swan means by the "Old Testament." What Swan considers as Old Testament Scriptures does not match what Catholics nor Orthodox consider to be the Old Testament.

The Protestant Old Testament is basically the Masoretic Text (as translated into various languages of the world) with its "table of contents" set in the Jewish school set up after the destruction of the Temple. This school was set up in Jamnia and established a Jewish canon of the Old Testament which did not include the deuterocanonicals. This ruling came circa 90 AD – well into the Christian era. This is the canon to which Swan refers when he says "Old Testament."

However, history shows that there were more than one version of the Old Testament at the time. Most people are aware of the Septuagint, the Greek-language version of the Old Testament that was used by faithful Jews in the Diaspora. The archaeological findings at Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls) show that many of the books of the Old Testament found there do indeed match the Masoretic Text. Many also match the Septuagint. What is not widely known is that many of the scrolls found match neither the Masoretic Text nor the Septuagint, but are of a third, previously unknown, version of the Old Testament.

However, assuming that the Masoretic Text is somehow the official Old Testament of the period (a best case scenario for Swan), there still exist difficulties which Swan must assume are absent. First, one must understand what the Masoretic Text actually is. It is more than just the Hebrew language, or original language, version of the Old Testament. When the Old Testament was written, it was written with consonants only. The vowels were left out. The Masoretic Text contains notes which essentially fill in the vowels by giving the words a pronunciation.

What this means is that whoever provides the pronunciation – or fills in the vowels – does much more than provide an interpretation of the Scripture. They actually establish its definition! Let's use a modern day example. Suppose you were to read in a cookbook recipe the line, "pr th frt." You could reasonably say that this line means either, "pare the fruit," or "puree the fruit." Yet, these are two dramatically different meanings!

Additionally, there is the historical fact that the Masoretic Text was not finalized until after 900 AD. During this time there were revisions; some minor, others major. For example, it has been asserted that the Masorite school changed Is 7:14 to use the word meaning "young girl" rather than "virgin" bearing a child as the prophecy. The assertion states that many of these changes were made to distance Judaism from Christianity.

Finally, different camps placed different levels of emphasis on the various books of the Old Testament. For example, the Sadducees believed that only the five books of Moses could be used as the infallible, inerrant word of God to be used as a means to settle disputes. When they question Jesus concerning the resurrection (a wife becomes widowed by seven brothers, so whose spouse will she be in the resurrection?), He first answers them by telling the Sadducees that they do not know Scripture (in Matthew and Mark). Upon telling them that they don't know Scripture, Jesus points back to the Pentateuch for his answer (in all three synoptic Gospels). He does not correct their lack of knowledge of Scripture by showing them that prophesies in Is 26:19 and Dan 12:2 are Scripture. Instead, he leaves the question unanswered and appeals to what they accept as Scripture.

Thus, a good analysis of what the devout believer 50 years before Christ knew to be Scripture leaves you with no real answer. Which of the competing texts were used in this devout believer's community and by his rabbis? How were the vowels filled into the words to give them meaning by those rabbis when read to the community? What actual books did his teachers hold to be truly inerrant? Except for the highly educated, the devout Jew would only know what he was told by his teachers. And we see that through no fault of his own, that could result in many different understandings of what constituted Scripture.

And as for the highly educated, well, Jesus told them that they didn't know the Scriptures. How could the average devout Jew of the time have the assurance of knowledge that Swan assumes?

In conclusion, Swan makes some very good and valid points. The Church is not the master of the Scriptures, but instead receives them as a gift from God. The Scriptures do not derive their authority from the Church, the recipient of them, but instead from God Himself as both the author and the gift giver. And the Church knows the Scriptures because God, in the person of the Holy Spirit, has guided her to this knowledge. However, because Swan over-states the concept of infallibility, he leaves himself open to criticism that God was possibly ineffective in His Revelation to the Church. He supports this idea by comparing the reception of the New Testament to the reception of the Old Testament. But in making this comparison and using it as an example, he assumes that the ancient Jew would have known the Old Testament exactly as Swan does. But he cannot truly show this to be the case.

May Christ, who reigns in Heaven with His Father, through the power of the Holy Spirit, lead us all to a better understanding of God's word in each and every day.

9 comments:

The reason we have the books we have is because a bunch of bullies burned all the other books and canons and persecuted those who used them out of existence. It wasn't God, but rather human cruelty, that gave us this canon. It is no wonder that it is so contradictory that it can't even make up its mind whether we are justified by works (Rom 2, James 2) or by faith apart from works (Rom 4). Not only do James and Paul contradict, but Paul contradicts himself (constantly) on this subject. No wonder the canon doesn't know if Jesus began his ministry after JB was cast in prison (Mt, Mk, Lk) or before (Jn) and whether he called his disciples after JB was in prison and did it by the sea of Galilee (Mt, Mk, Lk) or before and by the river Jordan (Jn). No wander also that the New Testament threatens us with an eternity in hell that the Old T knew nothing about. The bullies who canonized it and preserved it with sadism put their own sadistic stamp into it.

Getting to the point of your missive. You indicated that men, not God gave us the canon. Since God reveals Himself through His creation, how else did you think He was going to get them to us? We don't pretend to be Muslims who believe that God used the human authors of Scripture as mere stenographers like they perceive Mohammed. Besides, when did God tell you that the books of the NT are not inspired? I missed that memo.

As far as inconsistencies go, even if you could prove that there are actually irreconcilable inconsistencies (which I don't believe you can BTW), please explain how your argument would undermine the Catholic position on the inspiration of the Scriptures or the validity of our canon of books (DV 8-13) as opposed to the various Protestant ones. We do not believe that the NT books are a systemic all-encompassing history book-hence why we also consider Apostolic Tradition to be part of the Word of God as well. Moreover, we believe it is actually one of the functions of the Church itself to determine what books belong to the canon: "Lex orandi, lex credendi."

But I must ask,

A. Which books do you think should be in the canon that the Church left out? And why do you think that said book(s) are inspired Scriptures?

B. Which book(s) do you think got erroneously included in the canon that have no place there and why do you think that?

The Catholic position doesn't even require refutation. Your position is that might makes right. Because your religion buddied up to the emperors and became incestuously entwined with the state and used the secular power to kill off all opposition, therefore it must be right. In other words, to you the Devil is God. What more need be said to such diabolism?

Hi Mr. B. Usually, closing argument is made at the end of the case not at the beginning. Opening statements are for a recitation of the facts you intend to prove. Your statement is a tad sparse in the facts department.

But if I am going to be accused by you of Satan worshipping on my own blog, I would like to see the presentation of the evidence arrayed against me. Either you can play advocate or you can be the judge, you can't be both. TA. Which books do you think should be in the canon that the Church left out? And why do you think that said book(s) are inspired Scriptures?

B. Which book(s) do you think got erroneously included in the canon that have no place there and why do you think that?

Without a solemn expression from your infallible magisterium of one list, it is a bit hard for me to interact with your comment otherwise.

"A. Which books do you think should be in the canon that the Church left out?" The ones that could not be included today regardless of what anyone wants, since they were destroyed. Marcion's gospel, for instance. "And why do you think that said book(s) are inspired Scriptures?" I don't think any books are inspired Scripture, these were just as worthy of the erroneous claim as the ones we ended up with.

Hello Mr. B: Marcion's Gospel? Why should I consider that scripture when I can read the unabridged version in Luke's Gospel? It is sort of funny that you attack the Catholic Church for failing to include Marcion's version of Luke as part of its canon when he tossed out the entire OT in his!

And given your comments denying the inspiration of Scripture, I take it that the phrase "Lex orandi, Lex credendi" has no meaning for you either. If nothing is inspired as Scripture, what would be the point of writing something and calling it Scripture at all?

P.S. Either Hieronymian or Hieronymic would be the proper adjectives to describe Jerome's literary output. Ditto for Tertullianistic.

I don't really buy the idea that Marcion threw out the Old Testament, since after all a great deal of his own thought is dependent on it. I think he was just critical of the genocides and such.

Another text that should have been preserved, even canonized, I think is Tatian's text called 'Problems.'

But as to the question "If nothing is inspired as Scripture, what would be the point of writing something and calling it Scripture at all?" The answer is simple. A scriptural canon is a collection of divergent views on theology. Look even at the Bible we have and you will see this. Paul in favor of justification by faith apart from works in Romans 4 and James in justification by a combo of faith and works in James 2. Predestination in Romans 9 versus the total lack of it in Matthew, for example. Job's theology that maintains a man can be righteous over against that of his friends and Paul who maintain that it is impossible, as Job's friends say "even the angels are unclean in his sight" or as Paul quoting Psalms and Proverbs out of context says "there is none that doeth good."

Even historically, the canon is there to give us many divergent views of what happened. Mark tells us that Jesus named Simon as 'Cephus' at the beginning and so does John with respect to the name 'Peter'. But Matthew tells us he named him Peter when he made his confession. Mark has Peter only confess Jesus as 'Christ' and Jesus' response be to shut him up 'tell no man.' Matthew has him confess Jesus as Christ and 'Son of the Living God' and Jesus' response is to call him 'blessed' and give him the keys of the kingdom, to name him 'Peter' for 'on this rock I will build my church.' And what's more, Matthew has him say to Peter that "flesh and blood did not reveal this to you but my Father in heaven." But John has Andrew his brother, his flesh and blood, reveal this Peter! For in John, rather than Jesus calling Peter as the first disciple by the sea of Galilee with the 'I will make you fishers of men,' he has Andrew and the 'beloved disciple' become the first disciples of Jesus by the Jordan when John the Baptist says 'behold the lamb of God...' And "Andrew first goes and brings his brother Peter, to whom he says 'we have found the Messiah'" -- So in Matthew, Peter is the first to know Jesus is Messiah, and God reveals it to him. In John, Andrew knows ahead of him, and Andre reveals it to him. Why are both views included????? Because they are both inspired of a schitzophenic Holy Ghost who cannot make up his mind???? God forbid!!! They are both included because the compilers of the canon could not decide who was right.

P.S. Hieronymian, yes, but I was afraid some readers would not know Jerome except by the English name.

Note Bene . . .

I firmly believe, O God, all the sacred truths which the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church believes and teaches, because You, the infallible Truth, are the source of such truths. And it is in this holy faith I wish and pray to live and to die. Amen!

As a lay apologist, I will make mistakes, probably lots of them. To the best of my knowledge and ability, anything I write pertaining to the Catholic faith will not be contrary to the official dogmatic and magisterial teaching of the Catholic Church. In the event that anything I write here contains doctrinal or moral error contrary to the magisterial teachings of the Catholic Church, I will gladly and wholeheartedly submit to the authority of the Church and correct same. (Mt 28:18-20; 1 Tim 3:15)

About Me

I believe that I am the luckiest guy in the world. I am blessed with a beautiful wife, Christine, I live in an 150 yr. old farmhouse, and six cats.
I also have a son, Christian, and a wonderful daughter-in-law, Darcie as well as my beautiful and talented daughter, Alethea..